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(This is the 1998 version. An updated 2004 version is now available)

Comparison of three GB2312-80 tables in the public domain

(Last updated: 2000-10-22)

1. The confusion

The GB2312-80 standard is the most popular encoding scheme supported by software applications develped or localized for users of simplified Chinese. It is said that the standard enumerates 6763 distinctive simplified Chinese characters (c/f Lunde). However, several GB2312 tables in the public domain give different numbers of characters. This note tries to document where their differences are.

2. Sources

Three GB2312-80 tables can be found on the internet, which include:

• Table 1: ftp://ftp.ifcss.org/pub/software/data/guobiao-table.gb (To be referred as IFA2312 below.)
• Table 2: ftp://ftp.ifcss.org/pub/software/data/table.gb.gz (To be referred as IFB2312 below.)
• Table 3: http://www.haiyan.com/steelk/navigator/ref/gb2312/GB2312.zip (To be referred as HY2312 below.)

Examination of the documents suggest that the three tables were compiled by different (groups of) people. More information about the three documents can be found at:

• http://www.ifcss.org/software/cnapps/index.html
• http://www.haiyan.com/steelk/navigator/gbindex.htm

3. Data

In the following table, 'Local copies' contains local copies of the documents from their original sites. (They are provided here simply for fast access.) 'Character lists' contains lists of hanzi (with one hanzi per line) generated from their original documents. 'Sorted lists' are lists of unique hanzi from their corresponding lists. In the last two columns, numbers in brackets indicate the number of hanzi found in each document.

GB2312 Comparison Table

	Local copies	Character lists	Sorted lists
IFA2312	ifatable.txt	ifa2312list.txt (6768)	ifa2312lista.txt (6748)
IFB2312	ifbtable.txt	ifb2312list.txt (6768)	ifb2312lista.txt (6768)
HY2312	hytable.txt	hy2312list.txt (6746)	hy2312lista.txt (6746)

4. Comparison

The following is a list of characters that may demonstrate how the three tables differ in the number of unique characters. Column 1 is the internal code given in the three tables. Column 2 is from the IFA2312 table, Column 3 the IFB2312 table and Column 4 the HY2312 table.

	IFA	IFB	HY

B1C8	±È	±È	±È

DFC1	±È	ßÁ	

B2B8	²¸	²¸	²¸

DFB2	²¸	ß²	

BAF3	ºó	ºó	ºó

E1E1	ºó	áá	

BCEE	¼ï	¼î	

BCEF	¼ï	¼ï	¼ï

C0F5	Àõ	Àõ	Àõ

C0FC	Àõ	Àü	

C0FA	Àú	Àú	Àú

F0DF	Àú	ðß	

C3B4	ô	ô	ô

F7E1	̫	և	

C3B8	ø	ø	

C4F2	Äò	Äò	Äò

EBE5	Äò	ëå	

C7A4	ǧ	Ǥ	

C7A5	ǧ	ǥ	

C7A7	ǧ	ǧ	ǧ

C8FD	Èý	Èý	Èý

C8FE	Èý	Èþ	

C9CA	ÉÌ	ÉÊ	

C9CC	ÉÌ	ÉÌ	ÉÌ

CCAA	̫	̪	

CCAB	Ì«	Ì«	Ì«

CFC6	ÏÆ	ÏÆ	ÏÆ

CFC7	ÏÆ	ÏÇ	

D3DA	ÓÚ	ÓÚ	ÓÚ

ECB6	ÓÚ	ì¶	

D3E0	Óà	Óà	Óà

E2C5	Óà	âÅ	

DFB8	߸	߸	߸

DFE5	߸	ßå	

E6B1	߸	æ±	

DAA1	äÁ	Ú¡	

E4C1	äÁ	äÁ	äÁ

E7D6	çÖ	çÖ	

D7FE	éF	×þ	×þ

EED0	îß	îÐ	

EEDF	îß	îß	îß

From the above list it seems that IFB is perpahs most loyal to the original GB2312 standard which include quite a few traditional Chinese characters. In comparison, IFA converts those traditional characters into their simplified counterparts. The HY list simply does not list the code space that were used for traditional characters (that were included in the original GB2312 standard specification).

5. Suggestions for using the three tables

If you are concerned about backward compatility, it is best to use an assorted list based on the three tables. A simple run of 'sort | uniq' under a unix shell will get it done. However, if you do not care about the compatibility issue, the Haiyan list will be your best choice.

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